Gold, Echelon, Volpe Brown and more

CBS.MarketWatch.com

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Here are your Monday flashpoints:

-- Gold bugs don't often have their day in the sun. Monday was that day. Some 15 European central bankers won't start any new gold sales for five years. The metal, in a two-decades-long slump, is up about $28 an ounce since a U.K. gold auction last week. At $284 an ounce, gold is making its way toward $300 an ounce. Such a price, say analysts, effectively could boost the price of North American gold mining shares such as Newmont Mining
NEM, -1.71%
and Barrick Gold
ABX, -1.02%
by as much as 50 percent over time. Indeed, shares of small-dollar gold stocks such as Battle Mountain Gold
BMG, -8.33%
literally rose 60 percent Monday.

One-year: XAU gold index and BKX bank index

Last week, we pointed out the positive tone to the Bank of England gold auction, which was more than eight times oversubscribed. Technical analyst Mike Hurley at www.E-Offering.com gets credit for seeing the positive side of the Philadelphia Gold and Silver Index
XAU, -1.78%
a collection of the largest North American gold companies. Plus: Salomon Smith Barney analyst Leanne Baker gets a credit for upgrading the investment bank's opinion of gold mining stocks. "With gold having climbed by $12 per ounce in the three days following the auction, we are more confident than at any time in the last year that this rally has staying power -- at least through year-end," the analyst said last week. (Goldman Sachs joined the gold fray Monday with a brace of ratings upgrades for gold stocks.) See the original column.

-- Networker Echelon Corp.
ELON, -0.63%
is a California company whose shares are languishing even after an endorsement from top Cisco Systems executives
CSCO, +0.12%
That doesn't seem to bother CEO Ken Oshman, who is buying shares of his company in the open market, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show. Echelon makes LonWorks networks, a kind of engineering standard for open control networks. The company's systems can be found in factories, trains, public utilities and even your kitchen. An upcoming conference will feature the company's products and also trot out some of the company's fans from Cisco Systems, the largest network equipment company in the world. Echelon in its most recent quarter slimmed its losses. See statement on October conference.

-- Volpe Brown Whelan & Co. is the little investment bank that sometimes gets hidden in the shadows cast by larger San Francisco banks. Especially during a week like this, when Banc of America Securities, formerly Montgomery Securities, brings its clients to a vast investment conference in San Francisco. About 200 companies will appear at the Banc of America Securities show. Down the block, little Volpe Brown will bring 90 companies to town this week.

Volpe Brown's executives point to three companies -- VerticalNet
VERT, -4.71%
AboveNet Communications
abov
and EarthWeb
ewbx
-- that chose the investment firm for various services, including underwriting. The 13-year-old Volpe Brown Whelan specializes in what it calls emerging technology. That includes some biotechnology companies that are enjoying their best stock performance in years, including ImClone Systems
IMCL, +6.11%
Genentech
DNA, -2.76%
and Amgen
AMGN, -0.37%
The company's three-analyst health care unit also follows assisted living companies and Web-based health information developers. See related story.

Speech, speech! Thom Calandra (that's me) will speak at First Security Van Kasper's annual growth conference Oct. 4 in San Francisco. The topic is "Markets and the Media: What to Expect in the New Millennium." I also will be speaking at Chicago Investors '99 on Thursday, an event sponsored by WBBM NewsRadio 780, The Chicago Stock Exchange and 670 WMAQ.

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